96x Radio Session (1995)

Here we go with another great release from contributor Christina. This time we dive back into the past when “A Boy Named Goo” was just released, and the Goo Goo Dolls wanted to show off their unplugged skills to both new and old fans.

Information about this radio show is quite scarce. Nothing showed up on Google search, and there is no setlist.fm entry for it as well. Year is unknown but most likely 1995, so I will just tag it like so until new data comes up. Christina did some digging on her own and this is what she has to say about it:

I don’t have any info on when or where this was recorded, other than I assume it was sometime in 1995 (before “Impersonality” Robby mentions it’s off their new album.) It could be from this Virginia radio station? I would be curious if anyone has more info. It’s a fantastic acoustic set with a couple very memorable one-liners thrown in. A few of the songs from this appear in your “Melodic Minimalism” series, albeit in slightly different quality.

As far as the concert is concerned, we get a total of seven songs and in terms of execution, they sound amazing. Not at the same level as the VH1 Storytellers performance, but close enough. A few of these were in the aforementioned compilation, although quality here seems to be a bit more polished. The file is an .MP3 encoded at 160kbps, slightly below the (old) 192kbps standard. Furthermore, it’s just one big file featuring the entire performance, rather than one file per song.

Overall, this is a very rare release which shows John et al. doing something they rarely do, that is unplugged versions of their tunes. I wish they would play using such format more often.

You can listen to the concert below. Download links are provided at the end of this post.

EDIT: Contributor Christina seems to have found out that this concert might actually have taken place in Atlanta, GA, 1996. Let’s see what she discovered:

Circling back on the origins of this… I think I’ve solved the mystery, and I’m eating my own hat a bit. 🙂

A couple of old bootleg lists, including the one on your Bootleg Watch page, have a listing for “8/2/96 Live X Acoustic show, Atlanta, GA”. A quick search for “Live X” brought me to Atlanta station 99X, who hosted “acoustic, unplugged & intimate ½ hour sets… spanning the years 1993-2010.” Well, this recording certainly seems to fit that description.

Then I noticed they put out a few “Live X” compilation CDs, one of which includes the same live take of “Name” (in way better quality, too!)

So, there we have it… 99X in Atlanta, August 1996.

TRACK LISTING:

1. Girl Right Next To Me
2. Impersonality
3. Two Days In February
4. Long Way Down
5. Another Second Time Around
6. We Are The Normal
7. Name

DOWNLOAD (Main Source)

DOWNLOAD (Mirror 1)